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Thank you all, great posts. Sorry, Cobie, I don't understand your question. I use only front brake, harder first, softer later, fine-tuning the entry speed. The articles linked in the OP explain the importance of a smooth transition from deceleration to acceleration (transferring weight from front to rear) during the turn (or so I understand): "Next time you're on your bike thinking of all the smooth moves you'd like to make, think about your Smoothness Quotient and work on upping your score." "Use of the controls is the mechanical aspect of both riding and racing. Having them all in sequence and correctly timed must be accompanied by getting the amount you use them just right and in proportion with one another. Each action creates force and all forces have some resonant effect on one another. Create harmony with your controls. Smooth is all about catching the resonant wave from your last input." I just wonder what specific techniques everyone uses in order to achieve that. For short-sharp turns, I cannot do it properly; there is certain jerkiness in that transition (maybe some slack from the transmission, chain, throttle, don't know for sure).

What are your tips for transitioning from deceleration to acceleration while cornering without upsetting the suspension? 1) Explain your control inputs during the time since starting to release the brakes until finishing cracking the throttle open. 2) How smooth on the suspension have you been able to be? 3) Any special advice for the not-so-smooth riders? Some related articles from Keith Code: http://www.motorcycl...h_riding_moves/ http://www.motorcycl..._smooth_riding/

Very good point! I frequently wonder the same myself, not only with riders but also with drivers. Not everyone has a clear idea of how much energy a 2-ton truck rolling at 80 mph has. For street riding, quick swerving is a better maneuver in many situations (which also requires practice). However, if braking is the only option and you have not practiced it enough, you may not be able to do all you could to save the day.

IMHO, there is no more important skill to practice than stopping a bike properly, especially for street riding and different conditions. For track riding, a complete quick stop is rare, unless an accident happens; but still slowing down to a consistent entry speed is key. I practice emergency stops as frequently as a couple of times per week, 15 minutes on an empty parking lot have been sufficient for me to improve. I add sand and water to make it more challenging sometimes. http://forums.superbikeschool.com/index.php?showtopic=1548 Keeping a log book of your progress in making the stopping distance smaller and smaller is very good. Quick flicking and extreme swerving are some other of my avoidance practices. Moderate speeds are enough (25 mph max), since the deceleration forces are the same regardless of speed.

Comfort = smoothness = faster and safer riding. If you have the time before braking hard, moving to the back of the seat will help putting less pressure on the bars and moving the CG aft some, so the rear tire will have some more weight on it. That also reduces the chance of uncomfortable encounters between your groin and tank under the forces of braking because your knees will have better grip on the tank.

I believe that the lines and body position have improved much. I have no idea how to ride a Ducati like yours, but something sounds odd about the gearing. I would downshift more, not leting the engine start pulling at so low rpms'. For the same reason, it seems to me that you keep decelerating too deep in some curves, which may be loading the front excessively.

I would add hard acceleration. Maybe it is not common to do both simultaneously, but that happened to me once when I was taking-off from a traffic light and quick-steered to avoid an obstacle. Basically, the front tire turned while the bike kept going on a straight line. Only if your bike is moving slowly and a lazy turn is not an issue: http://www.promocycl...aquage-eng.html Note graph 3 particularly.

Hard to tell, ......but it seems that the bump made the front steer to the right, ...........so, we could assume that he was pushing hard enough with his left hand as to "encourage" the oscillation? This video may be interesting to some:

Welcome to the forums, Sotys ! It is good to know what to do once you are in trouble; however, street riding is more about foreseeing and not getting into trouble than escaping from it. Be extra cautious while riding unfamiliar roads and turns and never outrun your vision field. Always look as broad and far as possible, scanning for trouble. Leaning your bike blindly into a turn will place you above that patch of spilled Diesel or sand sooner or later. Read these articles: http://www.motorcycl..._a_trained_eye/ http://www.motorcycl...ics_code_break/ http://www.motorcyclistonline.com/features/columns/122_1205_sharp_focus_code_break/

Some practice may improve your confidence more than these few posts: "Let's take up question number one first. Can you steer your bike as fast as your car? If your answer is "no", my next questions are: What business do you have riding in traffic with cars that can out-maneuver you?, and, Ain't that dangerous? The answers, not pleasant ones to swallow, are: none and yes. You lose. ............ The truth is: if you can't quick turn your motorcycle, you won't even try. There are no instances on record where a motorcycle rider suddenly acquired the skill and guts to overcome their reluctance to execute a quick turning maneuver if they didn't already possess it: flashes of inspiration in this area appear to be in short supply, especially when most needed. Even the thought of making quick steering changes on a motorcycle is enough to raise goosebumps the size of eggs on most riders and the commonly cited reason for them is the seemingly very real sense that the front or rear or both wheels will wash out. In some cases that could be true, e.g., turning on wet or otherwise slippery surfaces. Riders are keenly aware of this and generally avoid it when possible. Another and very real concern is: an aggressive direction change with the front or rear or both brakes applied, something that often accompanies a panic situation. You can ask the front tire to take a substantial cornering load or a fistful of front brake but you may not ask it to do them both at the same time; them's the rules of rubber. That's one for Physics. ............. Take a moment to evaluate how quickly you are willing to turn your bike. If there were a scale from 1 to 10, where would you be. After twenty years of intense observation, I place the average motorcycle rider at around 4 on that scale. Is fear of falling a reason? Yes. Not practiced at the art of quick turns? Yes. Very few ever take the time to hone their skill up to the standard of effectiveness needed for the street." - Keith Code http://forums.superb...p?showtopic=109 Before you attempt a quick flick, focus on keeping your front tire loaded and the front suspension non-upset, you need steady weight on that patch. You need all the friction that you can get from your front patch; hence, simultaneous quick-flicking and wheelies (just an extreme visualization) are as bad as simultaneous quick-flicking and hard braking. http://forums.superb...p?showtopic=579 "If you think what I am saying is: you have to push through the fear barriers to get to clean riding, you are right; but the push comes after the understanding of where your attention should or should not be focused. .........There are basic principals to riding. What you ride doesn't change them. Where you ride doesn't change them. How fast you ride doesn't change them. They are what they are: they are not based on my opinions about them, they are based on well defined and easily understood basic principals you will understand. .........It has taken 30 years of devoted time and attention to separate the important from the unimportant and to figure out ways we can trick ourselves into giving up the resist-error-resist-terror way of doing things in favor of the focus-flow-focus-go mode............." - Keith Code Also, read these articles: http://www.motorcycl..._a_trained_eye/ http://www.motorcycl...ics_code_break/ http://www.motorcycl...cus_code_break/

Dave, Work on your upper body and head instead. Being heavier and more flexible to be moved away from the center line of the bike without compromising your anchoring to it, those body parts have much more influence in offsetting the weight than a few inches of butt off. In order to put things in perspective, take a look at these: http://forums.superbikeschool.com/index.php?showtopic=3303&st=20#entry26514 http://forums.superb...opic=3324&st=40 Best !

Very well put, Fajita !!! The only exception is that you and your bike "weight" more in the direction pointing toward the line between the contact patches of your tires. See these diagrams: http://forums.superb...t=40#entry26802 At 45 degrees, that dynamic weight is 40% higher than your static weight. "Once we become comfortable with 45 degrees and attempt to go beyond that, the process begins to reverse. Immediately we have more lateral load than vertical load, and things begin to heat up. Riders apparently have difficulty organizing this. Suddenly, we are thrust into a sideways world where the forces escalate rapidly. While it takes 45 degrees to achieve 1g lateral, it takes only 15 degrees more to experience nearly double that (depending on rider position and tire size)." - Keith Code http://www.motorcycl...aning_the_bike/ Now, regarding the effectiveness of loading either peg, read the following article after you have visualized that the directions of all the forces acting during turning any motorcycle are equivalent to the directions of the forces acting during riding along a slope in a straight line (see attached diagram): http://www.superbikeschool.com/machinery/no-bs-machine.php

Your work colleague and you could be right and wrong at the same time, since you are riding different bikes. According to how the geometry of the steering and tires (width and patch deformation) work for each during a turn, once the balance lean angle is reached, there are over-steering and under-steering motorcycles: Read pages 111, 112 and 317: http://books.google.....page&q&f=false "Tires have a large influence over bike handling, especially on motorcycles. Tires influence bike dynamics in two distinct ways: finite crown radius and force generation. Increase the crown radius of the front tire has been shown to decrease the size or eliminate self stability. Increasing the crown radius of the rear tire has the opposite effect, but to a lesser degree. Tire inflation pressures have also been found to be important variables in the behavior of a motorcycle at high speeds. Because the front and rear tires can have different slip angles due to weight distribution, tire properties, etc., bikes can experience understeer or oversteer. Of the two, understeer, in which the front wheel slides more than the rear wheel, is more dangerous since front wheel steering is critical for maintaining balance. When understeering, the steering angle must be greater, and when oversteering, the steering angle must be less than it would be if the slip angles were equal to maintain a given turn radius."

The book simply describes how to use a support point (outside peg) in order to increase the leverage of the inside arm to energically and quicly force a counter-steering pumping action to quik-flick the bike upon the turn. At high speeds, that action requires some serious force due to the gyroscopic resistance of the front wheel. Once the bike is turning, you don't need that pressure on the outside peg for that purposse (since counter-steering is a one time input to lean the bike), but for creating friction between your boot and the peg, which compensates for the pressure of your outside knee against the tank. Your question is not stupid.

Justin, Just ride slower and look farther away and your confidence will naturally come back. http://www.motorcyclistonline.com/features/columns/122_1303_vision_and_reference_points/ "When speed and time become vague, your SRs tend to spring into action, and either freeze you in the doubt of the moment or promote nervous, poorly timed, and unneeded corrections like stabbing the brakes or chopping the throttle." - Keith Code

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Man_TT#Total_overall_race_winners

Just something to consider when you deal with a powerful engine: The torque applied onto the rear patch is directly proportional to the angular position of the throttle handle. As soon as you twist it significantly, the pressure in the combustion chambers increases greatly and that force is immediately and entirely transmitted to the rear tire, even when you don't see any increment in the rpms'. A jerking action between idle and a cracked open throttle generates much smaller torque increment that what has been explained above. A trick to reduce both is to keep two fingers on the brake. That way, you feel more control on very small openings of the throttle.

The best riding position during cornering is the one that makes you comfortable and the suspension stable. If you try to hang-off to reduce the lean angle of the bike and to improve the suspension, but, because improper ergo, you introduce undesired mid turn steering inputs and/or suspension-upsetting forces while relocating your butt in the saddle, any benefit is annulled.

Stroker, I believe that your first priority should be buying a little motorcycle, even by yourself or with the help of other friends with similar interest. I wouldn't recommend a scooter, due to the smaller diameter of the tires, but something as small as a 50 cc with 16" tires could teach you many important skills, basically everything contained in the ATOTW books and DVD. My first bike was a 50 cc moped with which I battled in the traffic of a big city, skidding, falling and learning much of what I know today. The reduced speed of this bike shouldn't be a problem for you experimenting with extreme leaning. The lateral forces induced by any turn are inversely proportional to the radius; hence, very small radius at moderate speed will achieve high lateral forces. Decent tires and clean and dry asphalt are important. I would recommend only leaning your upper body with the bike during the first times of practice, until you get familiar with the feeling related to the forces of turning and the traction capability of the tires. Later on, you could start practicing hanging off, with which you should be able to achieve higher speeds for the same turns.

I was referred to by a member of http://www.motogymkhana.org/

Not exactly. In ideal conditions, in order to properly load the tires and the suspension, the acceleration through the corner should be kept constant at a speed’s increment of 2.2~4.4 mph for each second spent on the turn. As the speed increases during the turn, the entry speed should be such that leaving speed is not excessive regarding tire grip and/or lean angle. Hence, the entry-out speed difference will be smaller for high speeds, precisely the conditions that generate higher skidding forces (lateral g's) and therefore, require better balance of tire's loads and better suspension's ranges. For slower or higher radius turns, lean angles (skidding forces) will be less dramatic; hence, the acceleration may well be less than recommended in order to make the entry-out speed difference less dramatic (due to the increased time that the turn will take). Also important: lean angle and associated lateral force are a consequence of speed and radius of turn only. For the same constant-radius curve and trajectory, more speed generates more lateral force on the contact patches and more lean angle. To put forces in perspective, the throttle rule creates a longitudinal force equivalent to 10% ~ 20% of the weight acting on each contact patch. While that happens, the turning trajectory creates a lateral force that is several times bigger than that longitudinal force; if your lean angle is 45 degrees, that lateral force is equivalent to 100% of the weight acting on each contact patch. Both forces are perpendicular to each other and parallel to the road. There is a resultant force formed by those two; as long as that force doesn't grow beyond the circles of the schematic, you have grip; hence, when lean decreases (lateral force) there is room for acceleration or braking to be increased (longitudinal forces). Consider also that for many tires the contact patch can be more or less (it is usually bigger when leaned, as purposely designed by manufacturers like Dunlop - See schematic below); however, the circle of available grip doesn't grow much simply because the angle at which the suspension is working when leaned makes it less effective.

Welcome, Jack ! I don't believe that you should try overcoming that reaction completely, maybe finding a medium ground would be more appropriate. You shouldn't over-ride your sight: if you cannot see that right edge far ahead enough, you must either reduce your speed or relocate your line toward the yellow line (without getting dangerously close), so your eyes can reach a longer distance. Now, if yours is not a visual problem, but rather a survival reaction for riding and leaning over a negative camber, then you need to reconsider it.

I don't believe that Motogymkhana could ever be a substitute for track days, high speed riding, track and street racing and the associated proper couching and schooling; they are very different in essence. As stated before, at those low speeds, the radius of turns and the closest distances between two points is way more important than speed; actually, just a little excessive speed messes up the ideal trajectory. Techniques are also different: just observe how the rider moves her upper body to compensate for braking and acceleration and to help standing up the bike more vigorously, while her butt is kept as aft as possible. These videos make it look easy, but believe, it is extremely hard to make the clock show a decent time after an "attack". The set up of the bikes also differs: very deflated tires, higher handlebars and big rear sprockets (to increase acceleration as high speed is not needed). The sport is very new in UK and is taking baby steps in USA; Japanese riders have been practicing this for more than 15 years; reason for which they are so proficient. Finding a proper place that allows practice is also difficult, at least in USA. I have been kicked out of many empty parking lots by owners concerned about their liability,.............even if nobody is around or I fall on my own. Glad it helped with your question; you are welcome.

http://amgrass.com/ http://www.motogymkhana.org/ The lean angle depends on the speed and the radius; in the shown case, the slower speed is compensated by reduced radius. For such small turning radius, hanging-off is not the best technique because the bike turns a little more if at full lean: for that reason, most Motogymkhana's beginner riders hang-off on the outside in order to force the bike to lean exaggeratedly. Yes, counter-steering is hard and steering is extreme, since most maneuvers are done at full steer lock, controlling the balance of the bike with throttle and rear brake only. Little HP and grip is OK, one of the rules is that only street tires can be used. Still, they can compete in the rain. Read what Keith Code wrote about leaning on wet asphalt: http://forums.superb...?showtopic=1548 Not he, ...........the person in the posted videos is a Japanese girl !!! I practice Motogymkhana, but I am far from being good at it,.............yet............

Just do as the pro in the video did: seat upright on your standard and sports bikes and go faster and faster in a circular trajectory. Use an empty parking lot and a small radius, since you will need to go over the speed limit for any public street three of four times.